


a flame in your heart

by rosemary_boy



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1940s, Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Canon Divergent, M/M, Mutual Pining, but it doesn't have to be(?), i typed in "aziraphale is" and that tag popped up and honestly yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 17:59:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemary_boy/pseuds/rosemary_boy
Summary: If Crowley hadn’t shown up, Aziraphale could have gone back to thinking about all the things he wanted to say to him in theory, instead of having to figure it out in practice. He could have gone back up to Heaven and filed paperwork for a decade or three in penance, instead of deciding whether it’s worth it to burn down the walls he’s been building since, well, the wall.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> blame the title on me restarting fallout 3 last night
> 
> anyway this was loosely inspired by a post [@areyougonnabe](https://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com) made about Them hooking up after the church and through the rest of wwii and then it sort of spiraled into this mess of pretentious fire metaphors and maybe bookshop-burning foreshadowing if you squint. it's just angst but it got stuck in my head, so here we are.
> 
> epilogue is POSTED

The radio flickers on when they get in the car, something slow and almost sad[1]. The bag perched on his lap grounds him, constant pressure that keeps him from panicking and just miracling himself home. It’s not the driving that makes him nervous - sure, Crowley speeds down the rain-slick, bombed-out roads at top speed, but the streets are more or less deserted, lights off, blinds drawn. Aziraphale is used to his driving, anyway. But Crowley hasn’t so much as looked at Aziraphale since he offered him a lift, just opened the car door for him and then slid into place behind the wheel. He’s been staring dead ahead, eyes (presumably) fixed on the road in front of him.

Aziraphale, though? He can’t stop looking at the demon. He’s not sure if he should say thank you, but he doesn’t know what will happen if he says any of the other things swirling around in his head.

(Crowley had shown up in the church, just like he’d shown up in that cell in France. Crowley had shown up after Aziraphale had hurt him, had pushed him away. Part of Aziraphale wishes he’d just let the stupid Germans discorporate him. At least then Crowley wouldn’t be sitting two feet away, with his hands wrapped around the steering wheel and his eyes fixed unwavering on the road ahead for the first time in the history of the Bentley. At least then Aziraphale wouldn’t be sitting here, with his arms wrapped around the bag, thinking about long legs dancing down the long aisle and red hair smushed under a rakish little hat and a single hand outstretched. A single finger rising to meet his own over the handle of a bag. A match to kindling, a bomb to a church. 

If Crowley hadn’t shown up, Aziraphale could have gone back to thinking about all the things he wanted to say to him in theory, instead of having to figure it out in practice. He could have gone back up to Heaven and filed paperwork for a decade or three in penance, instead of deciding whether it’s worth it to burn down the walls he’s been building since, well, the wall.)

He knows exactly what will happen if he says thank you, and sure enough, as soon as the words leave his mouth, Crowley’s lips twist into something halfway between a smile and a frown. He gives the steering wheel a jerk, cuts a tight turn onto a narrow road, and Aziraphale grips the bag a little closer.

“Where are you living?” Crowley’s voice is low, clipped. Aziraphale can barely hear him over the radio. “Somewhere around here, is it?”

“Next street over,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley skids to a halt outside the bookshop, and finally turns to look at him. Aziraphale drops his gaze, looks around his seat, checking for nonexistent belongings that may be scattered around the front seat. There’s only the bag, still on his lap, only the bag and Crowley himself. Aziraphale drags his eyes up to the black sunglasses and swallows.

Crowley starts to speak: “I -“

“Would you… like to come in?” Aziraphale asks, cutting him off. Crowley’s eyebrows slowly raise, and he moves his mouth but doesn’t actually answer. Aziraphale continues, “Only, I’ve got a lovely burgundy inside, and Heaven knows that’s not an equal trade, my corporeal form for a, a glass of wine, but - oh, well, I -” He stumbles, because he shouldn’t feel obligated to repay a demon, but he’d rather like to repay a friend. Or, well, whatever Crowley counts as at this point.

Crowley smiles, though. “Sure,” he says.

Aziraphale unlocks the shop with Crowley hovering over his shoulder. He stands on the street, waits for the door to swing open, for Aziraphale to step inside. Aziraphale twists the key in the lock, shimmies the doorknob up to help it turn[2]. 

He unlocks the shop, and leads Crowley inside, turning the lights on with a downward flick of his hand. “You can sit in there,” he says, pointing toward the back room. “I’m just going to, uh,” and he raises the bag a little, “put these back in order. Won’t be a minute.”

Crowley makes his way through the shop as Aziraphale gently removes the books from the bag, places them deliberately on his desk. He nudges the one on top, in line with the others[3]. Then he deliberately un-adjusts it, lets its corners hang precariously off the edge of the tidy stack. He fiddles with the book, back and forth, until he hears a polite cough from behind him. Crowley is waiting for him, not quite in the back room just yet, leaning in the doorway. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he hasn't taken off his hat.

There’s another lull as Aziraphale retrieves the wine, the glasses, the black-market cigarettes that he unfortunately can’t seem to give up. Crowley migrates to the sofa, drapes himself over the seat like the blue-and-gold blanket across the back. He turns toward Aziraphale as he returns, and accepts a wineglass and a cigarette with an appreciative nod. 

“'S nice,” he says, waving around the room.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, blinking owlishly at him. “Thank you.” He sits in the chair opposite the sofa, watches Crowley’s throat pulse as he swallows, watches his cigarette glow red and his chest rise and fall. He looks into his wineglass and thinks about matches plunging into cool water.

After a moment, the demon leans forward. Smoke curls out from between his lips. “So,” he begins, “what the Heaven were you doing cavorting around with Nazis?”

“I - well, I was trying to stop them, obviously,” Aziraphale says defensively. “I was recruited, you see, by a young lady from the British Secret Intelligence - although, now that I think about it, she did seem a little overly knowledgeable about ancient prophetic texts. Anyway, she came to the shop and asked if I wanted to, you know, support my country and all that.”

“Your country?” Crowley asks with a hint of derision. “You’ve only been here a couple hundred years, and suddenly you’re a bloody patriot?”

“I consider myself English,” Aziraphale says[4]. “Besides, of course I’d want to stop the Nazis, it’s practically all they’re talking about upstairs. It was standard wile-thwarting.”

“No wiles there, angel. My side’s got nothing to do with them,” Crowley says darkly. “That kind of thinking is 100% human.” They both sigh, and Aziraphale refills both wine glasses.

“I suppose what matters is that they were still, you know, stopped,” Aziraphale says after a long, broody moment.

“Blown to bits, you mean.”

“They’ve stopped being Nazis, anyway.”

They look at each other, and burst out laughing. Crowley doesn’t laugh often, and it’s usually something sharp and cynical and harsh, like he’s fed up with the cosmos and all of its infinite absurdity, and like all he can do is roll his eyes. This - this is different. Looser, softer. Like he means it, like he isn’t thinking about it at all. Aziraphale stands up, empty bottle in one hand, like he’s going to swap it out or throw it away or… something.

Then the bottle slips out of his hand, and Crowley is up in a flash, grabs it before it shatters on the ground. “See, now you’re just being careless,” he says. “I can’t wait around to save you from stupid mistakes all the time.”

“I’m sure I’ve never asked,” Aziraphale says, a bit sniffy.

“No, you haven’t,” Crowley says. He leans down to set the bottle on the table with a hollow thud, and when he straightens up he’s just a little closer.

Angels don’t ask for things, don’t need to. No reservations at restaurants, no tickets to plays, just show up and walk in and enjoy. They don’t pray. Aziraphale has never asked Crowley for anything, and yet Crowley always does exactly what he wants.

“Crowley.” Angels don’t ask for things. Angels don’t ask questions.

“Angel?” Crowley only asks questions, the kind that burn away at you and swallow you whole. (“Why do we both have to be here?” "What happened to your sword?") Aziraphale is made of holy fire and stardust and love, love for Her and all of Her creations. He used to see Creation as an all-encompassing cohesive whole that he could love with his whole being without preference, but then a demon had huddled close to him as the first raindrops fell on top of the garden wall. He'd known the exact distribution and concentration of the love swirling around inside of him, and he'd known that something had shifted out of balance. And it never quite righted itself, not after almost 6000 years. He is supposed to love one thing and to love everything, but this is something else.

Demons run cold, colder than angels, colder than humans, even. You’d have to, to survive down in the sulphuric swampy heat, all jam-packed together in a hazey sweaty mess. A single demon own can drop the temperature in a room ten degrees - it’s why humans get chills down their spines when they meet one. 

Crowley’s lips are cool, his tongue just a bit longer than it should be. Aziraphale can feel the fire flaring up in his chest, and he can feel Crowley drinking it down. A hand in red hair, a knee between long legs. Thin fingers pushing at a camelhair coat, tugging at buttons and bowties. Aziraphale doesn’t have a bed, but he does have a sofa, and that’s basically the same, right? (“You’re absurd.”)

Crowley’s skin is dotted with freckles. He has scales on his elbows and behind his knees, and he has burn scars on his shoulder blades where his wings are hidden away. Aziraphale brushes a hand over one accidentally, and it’s almost enough to scare him all the way to Paris, bookshop be damned[5]. And then Crowley’s teeth scrape over his neck and he can’t be bothered to worry anymore.

There’s Effort involved, on both their parts, and Aziraphale pushes up into cooldarkwet with a groan that shorts out the lamp behind them. He thinks about the centuries they spent in deserts; he thinks about oases. It takes a lot of water to put out a fire, and Aziraphale is made of hydrogen and bookdust and he is very, very flammable. Crowley hisses and pops against his skin, water in a hot pan. 

They don’t talk about it after, just collapse on the sofa and listen as the all-clear sounds through London. 

And in the blacked-out, burned-out nights, through long, sticky summers and ice-cold, razor-sharp winters, an angel and a demon will hold tight to one another. The bookshop will manage to avoid any Blitz-related damages through the grace of someone or another. One day, Crowley will open a door in the back of the shop and find a set of narrow stairs, leading to a dusty, creaking bed. Heaven and Hell will be far too busy trying to keep up with the humans to look for them; they will hide in the tiny attic room while the world catches fire around them. 

(He will look at Crowley when he sleeps, freckled shoulders rising and falling in the not-so-dusty bed, and he will feel that imbalanced love rise up in his chest, and he will rub his eyes and think I’m just tired even though Crowley is the one who sleeps. He will look at him, and then he will wrap his robe tight around himself, and he will take his book downstairs to his shop, and he will read until Crowley stumbles downstairs to pour himself coffee that neither of them ever actually made.)

One evening, in 1945, Crowley brings in a paper when he enters the bookshop. He slips into the kitchen and tosses it onto the table beside Aziraphale’s teacup: “GERMANY CAPITULATES.”

Aziraphale looks up as Crowley watches him . “Right,” he says, reaching out to touch the paper. 

“Angel,” Crowley says slowly. Aziraphale knows what’s coming, knows that he’s going to take off, to run away until the next catastrophe he can’t handle on his own. “I love you.”

And that, of course, is not what he was expecting at all. He takes a slow, deep breath and says, “No.” He hopes it’ll pass.

Crowley opens his mouth, closes it again, opens it one more time. “Right,” he says, cold and sharp and brittle like a frozen lake. Aziraphale closes his eyes for a moment.

“Right,” Crowley says again, and this time it’s cracked. A frozen lake, stomped on. He turns on his heel, and Aziraphale watches him melt into the dark of the shop, reappearing in a flash of yellow streetlight as he opens the door. It slams behind him.

\-----------------

[1] It's "Stardust" by Artie Shaw. I'm not sure if it was big in England, but it did pretty well in the States during WWII. [return to text]

[2] It’s been fussy since the 1920s, and Aziraphale was going to fix it, but then some customers had started thinking the door was locked during business hours and it was honestly rather convenient.[return to text]

[3] You know, reader - book as metaphor for angel. [return to text]

[4] Englishly. [return to text]

[5] At this point, it might well be. [return to text]


	2. Epilogue

They don’t talk about it after, not that year, or the next one, or the next ten after that. Once, in 1954, Aziraphale spots flame-red hair and dark mirrored sunglasses, but the figure is gone before he can cross the street.

Late in September 1967, Aziraphale is sitting upstairs in his tiny attic room (no bed these days, just a cozy wingback chair and a large wardrobe) when he hears a knock at the door. It’s not the usual entitled, impatient rap of a would-be customer - it’s deliberately, painfully subtle, with the air of an amateur actor who thinks he’s finally mastered the stage whisper. Aziraphale sets aside the book he’s been reading and makes his way down the creaking little stairs.

He opens the door and a short, beefy, youngish [1] man pushes his way inside. “Mr. Fell?” he asks in a gruff, no-nonsense voice. Aziraphale nods. “Witchfinder Private Williams, at your service, sir.” That last word is crisp and chilled, in response to Aziraphale’s offered hand, which Williams - Witchfinder Private Williams - ignores. “I have a message for you, sir.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. He’d had his doubts about hiring the Witchfinder Army, but this young man is nothing but professional. “What is it?”

The man assumes a stance that Aziraphale can only assume is intended to be military in nature, but actually reads more like a child reciting poetry for their teacher: feet apart, hands clasped behind the back, chin raised but eyes wide. “Suspicious behavior observed surrounding one or several churches flagged by Mr. Fell. Tall young chap described by multiple members of the Army as ‘snooping.’ Young man further described as ‘flashy’ and ‘red.’ All accounts match description provided by Mr. Fell.” He relaxes slightly, shoulders slumping back down. 

“Right,” Aziraphale says quietly. He’s been expecting this, it’s why he hired the army in the first place, but it’s still worrisome that Crowley is doing the snooping himself. He’s working his way through a number of alarming potential outcomes when Witchfinder Private Williams clears his throat loudly and finally extends his hand - palm-up. He gives himself a little shake and starts fumbling in his pockets. “Right, yes, thank you, Private Williams -“

“Witchfinder Private Williams -“

“Yes, quite.” Aziraphale shoves a handful of change at the man and starts to crowd him out the door. “Thank you for your service, and have a nice day!” He slams the door shut behind him and leans against it with a sigh. A breath, two, three.

(Guess it hasn’t passed.)

Then he heads into the kitchen and fills a thermos with tap water.

\-----------------

[1] He is at least fifty. Aziraphale would describe almost any human as “young." (Contrast with Crowley, who would call any human over the age of 30 “old.") [return to text]

**Author's Note:**

> lmk if the footnotes do something fucky, i'm really slapdash when it comes to html or coding in general.
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://rosemary-boy.tumblr.com) if u wanna say hi or talk about good omens (or the adventure zone, or law school, or music recs, or... whatever, really!)


End file.
